The present invention relates to a load drive circuit and integrated circuit suitable for use in the scan driver and address driver of a plasma display, and to a plasma display using those circuits.
An example of the load drive circuit for use in the scan driver and address driver of the plasma display is a switching circuit disclosed in JP-A-06-120794. This load drive circuit has a high blocking voltage MOS transistor of which the gate voltage can be reduced to a lower value than the power source voltage. Thus, the semiconductor devices for this circuit can be produced at low cost. In this load drive circuit, in order to make the output level to the load “L” (low), a MOS transistor connected in parallel to the load is turned on, and in conjunction with the operation of that transistor, another MOS transistor connected at the high-potential side in series with the load is turned on. In order to turn on this high-potential side MOS transistor, it is necessary that an input signal be inverted by a level shift circuit that is formed of an input-purpose MOS transistor and input-purpose impedance and transmitted to the gate of the high-potential side MOS transistor. On the other hand, in order to make the output level to the load “H” (high), the MOS transistors are turned on/off contrary to the above.
Other examples of the load drive circuit are disclosed in, for example, JP-A-05-344719 and JP-A-09-200017. These drive circuits have, in addition to the main power source to the load, another power source for a flip-flop that is floated from the reference potential (for example, the ground potential) at one terminal of the load. This floating power source is used to drive the high-potential side MOS transistor. Specifically, the states of the flip-flop circuit are switched by the output from the above-given level shift circuit that has the switching element that is turned on/off by the pulse-shape input signal, and the gate (base) of the high-potential MOS transistor is controlled by one of the outputs of the flip-flop.